This blog is about ideas and issues that interest me. My writings are a blend of facts, concepts, my observations, personal experiences, as well as my thoughts and opinions. I usually write about Relationships, Mental Health, Personality, Life Styles, Culture, Feelings and Emotions, Education, and Mysteries.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND THE TEACHING OF PSYCHOLOGY: REFLECTING UPON TEN YEARS OF EXPERIENCE

Teaching
is not restricted or limited to the classroom. With the advancement in
technology and the increase in internet usage, over the past few years,
teaching has gone way beyond the classroom.In
recent times, blogs, Facebook pages, and Twitter handles have become popular
educational tools. For students, such social media platforms have become types
of asynchronous communities, where they can get relevant information and even
share it with others. Information from such platforms is very easy to access,
and with just a click it can be shared to multiple people. In this way, the
same information is accessed by multiple people almost at the same time.

Generally,
on such platforms, information is given in a much simpler form, which makes it
easier to understand, as compared to text books and journals. In this way, they
become very good additional educational resources. Further, due to the short
attention span that many of the students have nowadays, reading from books is
found to be taxing and too demanding for them. In such cases, reading from
blogs and Facebook pages, in which information is given briefly yet
comprehensively, brings about a lot more interest.

If
students find social media to be a quick and easy way to learn, teachers find
it to be a fun and exciting way to teach. Formal teaching requires teachers to
mostly stick to the given syllabus. They can surely improvise and deviate
sometimes to make it interesting, but eventually, keeping in view the limited
number of classes in a semester, they cannot go beyond the syllabus. This is
where teachers can make full use of social media.

There are always some exciting and fascinating information out there that a teacher
may want to share with students, but is unable to do so due to time
constraints. Using blogs and Facebook pages, authored and created by them,
teachers can exactly do that. By sharing information on their own blog and
Facebook page, they are able to give an idea of their real interests regarding
the subject. It helps to display a sense of individuality, and the matter that
they are sharing may also reflect on some hidden aspects of their self, giving
out a personal touch to the information that they are sharing.

Students
who have read my posts, quite a few times have had discussions with me about
those topics. In this way, it has also led to better teacher-student
interactions, and also increase their interest in psychology.

Apart
from being useful academically, a number of individuals, from different parts
of the world, have expressed to me how reading my posts have helped them to
understand them in a better way and how it has helped them to feel positive
about themselves. People have, especially, found the posts on emotional
hijacking, self-satisfaction,
introversion,
inferiority
complex, loneliness,
and social
motives to be very useful and helpful. The blog, therefore,
is not only an educational tool, but also a platform for understanding and
being aware about mental health, which has taken teaching to a different level.
Over the years, this blog has gained a lot of popularity and has readers from
over 150 countries.

Along
with my interest in psychological issues, I am also fascinated with the origins
of psychological concepts, which led me to start my blog called History of Psychology(www.historyofpsychology.net),
on May 3, 2015. This blog is all about how ideas, concepts, and perspectives,
in psychology, have emerged, how one perspective led to another, who were the
proponents of important ideas, and what led psychologists to come up with a
specific idea. The writing style on this blog is simplistic so that theories
and concepts are understandable. The topics on this blog can be very technical
and that is why a simplistic writing style is maintained in order to make it
readable to a wider audience.

Through
this blog, I try to cover various aspects of the history of psychology such as
structural and functional psychology, psychoanalytic psychology, clinical and
abnormal psychology, act psychology, and so on. I write about topics that are
generally not covered in the syllabus, which, thus, gives an opportunity for
students to learn about theoretical considerations in an easy, simplistic
manner.

From a teaching perspective, it helps me to simplify the technical,
theoretical aspects of the history of psychology, making relatively difficult
topics easier to understand. This turns out to be challenging and stimulating,
which works to enhance my enthusiasm and interest in psychology. The blog
creates a bridge between the traditional and the contemporary, which turns out
to be of great interest and encourages critical thinking, which is a highly
important aspect of education.

To
quite an extent, my Facebook page, InterestingFacts About Psychology (www.facebook.com/InterestingFactsAboutPsychology)
deals with a similar purpose. On this page, I post relevant, thought provoking
facts related to psychology, on a regular basis. I began this page on November
4, 2010. So far, I have posted more than 900 facts and the page has got more
than 20000 likes, from over 50 countries. The information that I share on the
page, are related to pre-modern, modern, and contemporary psychology. It is a
quick, fun, and enjoyable way of learning psychology for the readers.

Generally
such information can be gained by in-depth reading of books and journals.
However, through this page, I provide a platform for readers to get such
information with little effort. It is useful not only for people who have a
psychology background, but also for those who are interested in psychology but
are from other disciplines such as Management, Engineering, English, Philosophy,
Education, Biology, etc. As I share information on this page every three to five
days, it requires me to update my own knowledge in psychology regularly, which
is always useful for a teacher and for someone who is in academics. I have also
created a Twitter handle (www.twitter.com/FactsPsy)
of this page, which allows me to share information to a much wider audience.

In
this way, over the past ten years, I have been using social media platforms
like blogging, Facebook, and Twitter for teaching psychology. As a teacher, I
have found social media to be a very useful educational tool. I have found it to
be a fun, exciting, and motivating way of reaching out to students and other
individuals with whom I do not have an interaction with on a day-to-day basis.

Being
consistently writing on my blogs and Facebook page, has helped me as a teacher
academically – it has enabled me to increase my knowledge and articulate my
ideas in a better way – and in the process has added to my personal growth.
Through my fulfilling ten years of experience, I have decided to promote the
usage of social media as a useful method of teaching.

Saif Farooqi

A PhD in Psychology (Intimate Relationships). I'm a writer, an independent researcher, and conduct workshops and awareness programs in schools and colleges. I have had experience in teaching Psychology to
undergraduate students of University of Delhi as well as constructing Psychological tests.
Apart from my interests in interpersonal relationships, educational
issues, personality, communication, and mental health, I have a wide
range of interests that are beyond Psychology, which keep me active,
driven, and make my life fun and joyful.

Currently, I'm also working as an Assistant Professor at Vivekananda College, University of Delhi, India.

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About Me

A PhD in Psychology (Intimate Relationships). I'm a writer, an independent researcher, and conduct workshops and awareness programs in schools and colleges. I have had experience in teaching Psychology to
undergraduate students of University of Delhi as well as constructing Psychological tests.
Apart from my interests in interpersonal relationships, educational
issues, personality, communication, and mental health, I have a wide
range of interests that are beyond Psychology, which keep me active,
driven, and make my life fun and joyful.

Currently, I'm also working as an Assistant Professor at Vivekananda College, University of Delhi, India.